at
that time its injurious effect determined to this particular one.

Every farmer is aware of the injurious effect of the coarse, rank
herbage of low, marshy, and woody countries, and he regards these
districts as the chosen residence of red water; it may be added, that
they are also the chosen residence of abortion. Hard and mineral waters
are justly considered as laying the foundation of many diseases among
cattle, and of abortion among the rest.

Some careful observers have occasionally attributed abortion to
disproportion in size between the male and the female. Farmers were
formerly too fond of selecting a great overgrown bull to serve their
dairy or breeding cows, and many a heifer, or little cow, was seriously
injured; and she either cast her calf, or was lost in parturition. The
breeders of cattle in later years are beginning to act more wisely in
this matter.

Cows that are degenerating into consumption are exceedingly subject to
abortion. They are continually in heat; they rarely become pregnant, or
if they do, a great proportion of them cast their calves. Abortion,
also, often follows a sudden change from poor to luxuriant food. Cows
that have been out, half-starved in the winter, when incautiously turned
on rich pasture in the spring, are too apt to cast their calves from the
undue general or local excitation that is set up. Hence it is, that when
this disposition to abort first appears in a herd, it is naturally in a
cow that has been lately purchased. Fright, from whatever cause, may
produce this trouble. There are singular cases on record of whole herds
of cows slinking their calves after having been terrified by an
unusually violent thunder-storm. Commerce with the bull soon after
conception is also a frequent cause, as well as putrid smells--other
than those already noticed--and the use of a diseased bull. Besides
these tangible causes of abortion, there is the mysterious agency of the
atmosphere. There are certain seasons when abortion is strangely
frequent, and fatal; while at other times it disappears in a manner for
several successive years.

The consequences of premature calving are frequently of a very serious
nature; and even when the case is more favorable, the results are,
nevertheless, very annoying. The animal very soon goes again to heat,
but in a great many cases she fails to become pregnant; she almost
invariably does so, if she is put to the bull during the first heat
after abortio